Wine sales soar on China’s Singles’ Day festival

China’s online wine and spirits retailers have reported strong rises in sales during the 2015 Singles’ Day shopping festival.

China’s Singles’ Day success

Retailer Yesmywine doubled sales on its Tmall.com outlet versus last year to hit CNY 40.5m (£4.2m) during China’s Singles’ Day, as part of a ‘72-hour sales campaign’.

Wine and spirit retailers Sichuan 1919 and jiuxian.com also reported record sales figures.

China’s Singles’ Day, also known as Guang Gun Jie, is celebrated on the 11 November. It has become the world’s largest online shopping festival led by major online retailers including Tmall.com and JD.com.

Online retailers tend to give exceptional discounts on this day to attract consumers’ attention.

The Tmall.com sales figure, according to Yesmywine, only accounts for a part of its total campaign sales across all its online and offline platforms.

It told local media that its official website, www.yesmywine.com, also ‘saw significant increase in sales’, though the final figures are yet to be released.

‘We aim to make a profit,’ WANG Yang, executive vice-president of Yesmywine told local media before the launch of the campaign. Wang stressed that ‘unlike some brands’, Yesmywine ‘will not use extremely low price to increase our sales’.

Wine prices

Wines priced at or below CNY200 (£20) per bottle were among the top sellers, according to Yesmywine’s official site.

Besides everyday wines, part of Yesmywine’s fine wine portfolio, including Bordeaux Grand Crus such as Chateau Haut-Brion 2010 and Chateau Calon Ségur 2006, were also sold at a discounted price for a limited amount.

Though some of them were sold over CNY1000, ‘the sales have been surprisingly heated,’ said Yesmywine.

The wine retailer ranked 4th among Tmall’s alcohol beverage stores during the Singles’ Day campaign.

Top sellers

Sichuan 1919’s Tmall shop was crowned the top alcohol beverage seller during Singles’ Day, making CNY157m on its wines and spirits portfolio, doubling its CNY72m record in 2014.

Jiuxian.com with its spirits-main line-up came second in revenue, but attracted the most buyers (125,148 people).

After breaking last year’s sales record in 12 hours, Tmall.com hit CNY91.2bn sales by the end of the 24-hour online shopping festival, a 59.7% increase from last year’s campaign. Around 69% of the trasnactions came via mobile devices, according to Tmall.com.